The 2011-12 NALP Directory of Legal Employers has just been published, and the results are surprising. The representation of women declined slightly for the second year in a row, for only the second time since NALP started compiling this information in 1993.
The percentage of women associates fell to 45.35 percent in 2011, down from 45.41 percent in 2010, and 45.66 percent in 2009. Until this year, it had been climbing steadily since 1993, when female associates comprised 38.99 percent of the firms. Over the same period, minority representation has increased — from 8.36 percent to 19.90 percent, despite a slight decline in 2010.
“Last year, on the heels of the recession, we saw the figures for women and minority associates dip for the first time since NALP began tracking lawyer demographics at the firms. The 2011 figures reveal that a year later, while the figures for minority associates have bounced back, the overall number of women associates actually declined further. This is a significant finding,” said James Leipold, NALP’s Executive Director.
“As law firms work to redouble their diversity efforts in the wake of the widespread layoffs in 2008 and 2009, we might have expected the representation of women and minorities to bounce back together, but that is not the case,” he said. “The newest data suggest that the temporary setback for minority representation has been reversed but that the representation of women among associates has continued to trend downward. The loss of women has slowed, but at a time when far too few women make up the partnership ranks of US law firms, this is not a trend that can be ignored.”
At the partner level, women now account for only 19.54 percent of the partners in these firms; in 1993 when NALP starting collecting these stats, women accounted for just 12.27 percent of partners.
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